Orwell’s Roses — Beauty as Resistance
Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses is not a conventional biography. Instead of moving step by step through George Orwell’s life, Solnit begins with a simple act: Orwell planting rosebushes in 1936. From that starting point, she explores how the natural world, small pleasures, and everyday beauty shaped his politics and his protest.
The roses become more than flowers in a garden. For Solnit, they symbolize the very things authoritarianism seeks to crush: joy, clarity, delight, and the human capacity to care. By tending roses, Orwell was not turning away from the world’s struggles—he was nurturing the kind of life worth defending.
Solnit’s narrative wanders—sometimes into the history of colonial trade, sometimes into climate change, sometimes into capitalism’s destruction of nature. Critics have called this “rambling,” but the structure mirrors her point: lives, politics, and landscapes are inseparable. Orwell’s commitment to clarity in writing and justice in politics grew directly out of his love for ordinary pleasures.
Why Reading Orwell Matters Now
To read Orwell today is to confront the same forces he resisted:
- Language twisted for propaganda — Orwell’s essay *Politics and the English Language* feels eerily current when we watch public discourse reduced to slogans, spin, and outright lies.
- The normalization of authoritarianism — *Animal Farm* and *1984* show us how small compromises pave the way for repression.
- The erasure of truth — Orwell’s warnings about memory holes and “doublethink” echo in debates about disinformation, censorship, and book banning.
But Orwell’s Roses reminds us that Orwell was not only a writer of grim warnings. He believed protest was sustained by joy, by the defense of beauty, and by the conviction that a world without roses, music, or laughter is not one worth living in. That balance—resistance and delight—is what makes him essential reading in our own precarious moment.
Books to Read About Orwell
Biographies
- George Orwell: A Life by Bernard Crick (classic, authoritative)
- Orwell: The New Life by D. J. Taylor (recent, nuanced, full of archival discoveries)
- Orwell: The Authorized Biography by Michael Shelden (authorized, Pulitzer finalist)
- Critical Studies
- The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey
- Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens
- George Orwell and Russia by Masha Karp
Orwell’s Major Works
- Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
- Burmese Days (1934)
- The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
- Homage to Catalonia (1938)
- Animal Farm (1945)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Key essays:
- “Politics and the English Language” (1946)
- “Shooting an Elephant” (1936)
- “Why I Write” (1946)
In a time when democracy feels fragile, when truth is contested, and when joy itself seems like a scarce resource, Orwell’s Roses offers a lesson: resistance is not only about saying “no” to tyranny but also about saying “yes” to beauty, clarity, and freedom. Reading Orwell now—through Solnit’s eyes as well as his own words—is both a warning and an invitation: to protect not just justice, but also the roses.
Progressive Teachers Network 
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